consolation prize

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I am petulant about vacation.

The last several years have been a whirlwind of international adventure: road trips to San Francisco and Portland, two trips to London, a week in Cuba. These were among my first ever “real” vacations, and I developed a taste for them – did you know it’s FUN to go to exciting places and be all carefree and shit? I had no idea! .. but now that I do, I don’t know that I can ever go back.

Sadly, my reality doesn’t have me jetting off to the UK every time I run out of mascara. Knowing that a trip to London for a third year in a row was probably not in the cards (stupid cards), I planned a simple road trip that would allow Ed and I to spend some time on the coast and in California. The trip never happened for a variety of reasons, so we came up with a less-excited-but-still-fun Plan B: taking our scooter/motorcycle to Victoria, and riding around the Island for a few days. It’s no San Francisco, but it’s one of my favourite things in the world to do. We wanted to make it feel more like an actual vacation, so we were going to get a hotel for a few nights instead of staying in my mother’s horrible basement suite .. but certain financial uncertainties arose making the expenditure unwise. Still, it’d be fun to ride around even if we had to stay in the Basement Suite of Dank Sweaty Hell, so Plan B was looking pretty good.

Then I got caught riding Lola without a Class 6 licence. While we COULD still throw caution to the wind and go anyway, neither of us feel like thumbing our noses at The Man to that extent .. so both Plan A and B are shelved for the year, and I am sad.

But wait! Ed has an idea! “Don’t be sad,” he says. “We can go to EDMONTON!”

If I was merely sad before, I am full-on sobbing now: I am barely okay with not going to (or existing in) London. I can live without driving down the coast and exploring the parts of San Francisco we missed before. We will ride to Victoria eventually, and it will be even better when it’s legal.

But to not do any of those and replace it with a trip to EDMONTON? In the armpit of summer? And think that I would be excited about the adventuresome possibilities that await?

You’re hilarious, universe.

I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO EDMONTON. I feel bad about not wanting to go. There are many excellent reasons – okay, 1.5 excellent reasons – actually, 1 excellent reason and 1 tasty reason – to go: we could visit Ed’s parents, whom we haven’t seen since their trip to BC in 2011. Also, we could eat donairs. And that’s IT.

It’s true that I am somewhat biased against all of Alberta, for reasons that I don’t fully understand myself: alls I know is that when I think about going to Edmonton, my insides get all panicky and I am awash with dread. Ed is very familiar with my extreme distaste in spending my hard-earned vacation days sitting in someone’s basement with nothing to do because it’s hot as balls outside and also it’s Edmonton, but he’d really like it if I was okay with this. I would too, because it would certainly be easier. Unfortunately, there’s a very loud brat living inside my head who can’t get over how my only vacation this year went from London, to San Francisco, to Victoria, and landed on Edmonton. It makes me sad. I want to go on vacation to have happy fun adventure times exploring new places and seeing neat things, not visiting family. All of Ed’s friends and relatives now have children, and I don’t want to spend my Fun Times pretending I’m interested in babies and backyard landscaping. I’m fully aware that this is a shitty way to feel, but I am fundamentally broken in many ways and family freaks me out – so not only would I not be somewhere exotic and fun, I’d be desperately uncomfortable the entire time. I don’t want to subject myself to that, let alone as my only fun getaway this year.

This is stressing me out. I love Ed’s parents and want to see them more often, but I don’t want to go to Edmonton.

What to do?

the angry sads

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These last two weeks have been an epic shit show of Bad Times, and the universe just keeps on giving:

  • Twelve Thirteen (13) people have left or are leaving the office since June 28th; among them many people I enjoy working with AND the entire Product Design team (except me)
  • Last night all my coworkers went out to commiserate with alcohol, and even though I specifically asked four separate people to contact me when they got to Thing B after Thing A so I could join them, they all forgot and that fucking hurts like hell
  • Tonight I received a traffic citation for $276, because I was caught riding Lola without a Class 6 driver’s license
  • I’ve been a weepy, butthurt mess for the last 30 hours or so
  • What the fucking ever-loving fuck, America

I cannot handle all of these messy feelings.

disloyal

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Much like how my mother felt about me while I was growing up, I am angry at my wallet for being so big. It is packed with stupid 98%-of-the-time-unnecessary loyalty cards that infuriate me every time I look at them, because this is 2013 and there is NO. FUCKING. REASON. I should have to carry around your stupid little piece of plastic in order to collect points/get the sale price/freely give you access to my purchasing habits so you can better market things my way. I actually carry two wallets: one with useful things like my ID, bank card, and cash; the second (which is a cheque-sized wallet, unlike the tiny coin purse thingie with the important stuff) contains nothing but 13 American dollars and a stack of loyalty cards for places that prefer to exist in 1963, when handbags were voluminous and made of fine Corinthian leather (the Corinthi being the beast best associated with personal accessories the size of a small planet).

The stupidest thing of all is that every single one of these stores have an app and web presence that make them look as though they’re a “hip”, “with it” company that uses the “internet” to connect with “consumers”. Most even have online shopping and an active social media presence – in fact, it’s only when you get offline and into meatspace that everything goes to shit and I do not understand. Why, exactly, can I not keep all my loyalty cards in my phone* like they do in the rest of the first world? “Oh, our scanners can’t read phone screens” “We need to see the card to make sure you’re who you say you are” “Speak into my ear trumpet sonny, I can’t hear so good after fighting at the Alamo” and so on and so forth. GET WITH THE FUCKING PROGRAM, PEOPLE. It’s costing you sales, as people will avoid your stores if they’ve forgotten to haul their wheelbarrow of cards around. I won’t go to Save-On-Foods or Shoppers Drug Mart if I don’t have my cards, and I can’t go to Costco without it. I don’t collect Airmiles anymore, because I don’t have the card on me when I need it. Fabricland? No card means no 50% discount on my purchase, so I have to carry it. Hell, I’m even fed up with stamp cards: I have six or seven half-full Pinkberry cards that I would love to redeem, but since I don’t want to carry the fucking universe on my shoulder, they just pile up and make me mad. It’s insane and wasteful and just plain stupid. Passbook, motherfucker. Do you know of it?

Figure this shit out, already. Join us in the brave new future. STOP SUCKING.

*I know there are third party apps available to keep your cards in, but the problem lies in the stores – they are not equipped to take anything other than a physical card their archaic technology can read.

save it

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Dear Vancouver Business Women:

I am all too aware of the fact that I look as though I spent the night in the back of a pickup truck filled with glitter. Honestly, this isn’t far from the truth. That being said, if you could please keep your obvious stink eye to yourself, we’ll all get through this Wednesday a little bit easier. Deal?

If you keep it up, I’ll randomly look at you and start laughing hysterically. Did I remember a funny joke? Do I find your purchased-at-the-night-market “designer” handbag amusing? You’ll never know!

No love,

Kimli
Who sometimes looks like utter crap
Deal with it

the best things in life are free

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.. unfortunately, my life is comprised mainly of apparently rotten things that all require cash money that I may not have. So, I’ve brainstormed some potential money-making ideas:

  • No one really NEEDS two kidneys
  • Marketing my blood as a hardcore, Mountain Dew-esq alternative to maple syrup
  • Selling my eggs – who wants a little half Malaysian in them?
  • Hand jobs for $5
  • Selling the sperm collected from the $5 handjobs
  • Opening a pie, lemonade, and handmade pornographic goods stand with Sam
  • Sell out! Attention all companies: Delicious Juice Dot Com is ready to start shilling for you! Do you want access to my four remaining readers? Would your product or service be a perfect fit for my .. apparent inability to finish a sentence? Contact me today!
  • Be independently wealthy and become a vigilante tech writer
  • Buy, then resell, Beanie Babies
  • Return all my Diet Coke empties
  • Kissing booths are so passé – I will open a motorboat booth. Make blaggle wooble sounds in my bosom for $2!
  • Visit the bereaved and claim I sold his or her recently deceased loved one an expensive, personalized user manual that has money owing on it

Oh yeah. I’m going to be paying my bills in NO TIME.

now i’m over here

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Not long after I started my job, I was moved to the Worst Desk in the Office (they assured me it was nothing personal, but I still have my suspicions). Stuck, I tried to make my workspace feel like home by stealing furniture and creating some walls, then covering those walls in video game posters and toys. None of this could really disguise the fact that the desk was still terrible, but at least I had some semblance of privacy. I truly hated it, though – since the day I moved, I’ve been trying to get a different desk anywhere else. I volunteered to sit in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or in the middle of the floor, all to no avail: I had to stay put, and it sucked.

Fortunately but unfortunately, a mass exodus at work has freed up some space and more than a year later, I finally have a new desk. It is an excellent desk; one that people don’t walk behind a million times a day. It’s bigger than my old one, and has fewer splinters that ruin my clothes when I sit down. I even have a tall cabinet with shelves for all my toys and Diet Coke cups (I have 9 mugs at work for some reason) and the collective Nerf arsenal of the Graphics Department. I am pleased with my new home.

Being pleased as punch will only get you so far when you are VERY SAD, though: another person from my fledgling Product Design team has given notice. My future is up in the air, and that is my least favourite place for it to be: I am a sad, worried Kimli.

These are dark times, even with all the light streaming through my new windows. One small plus, though – a gratifying number of people who walk past my old desk are shocked/upset/confused/worried when they see that I am no longer there.

skeletons everywhere

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In case you don’t follow BC news unless another foot has been found, two people have been arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb the BC Legislature building on Canada Day, using pressure cooker-style bombs. This is awful for many reasons, and I am glad they did not carry out their plan.

We’ve never been this close to a terror plot before, and it’s strange to watch it unfold in the media and know it’s on our turf instead of elsewhere in the world. I get the distinct feeling that no one is really quite sure what to do, so anything goes .. like touring the apartment of the suspects and showing the world how they live.

Yesterday afternoon the suspect’s landlord opened up their apartment and let the media in to take pictures and film the inside of their home. Is it just me, or is that really fucking weird? It feels like we’re taking a giant leap towards the media obsession shown in Natural Born Killers, and I definitely don’t want anyone to saw my legs off. Just sayin’.

It’s also a slippery slope. What if the media was invited to take a look at your most private moments the minute you get accused of a crime? What if people were invited to see how you live and pass judgement on you based on your dirty laundry, both actual and figurative?

I can only imagine what people would think if they knew little more than what I was accused of and what my home looked like. At first glance (and also second through nineteenth glance), my house is full of toys and gay porn. I have books on common household goods that will kill you and lists of poisons that can be mistaken for disease. Murder in the 16th century? You bet. How to have sex like a lesbian? Entire shelves. A butcher knife with blood splatter? Yes, but it came like that, honest. Bloody coconuts? Naturally. My browser history is terrifying (intellectual research); my purchase history questionable and fabulous. If you add all my superficial pieces up, what sort of picture do you get? If you were told I had done something terrible, how ominous does my collection of headless Hello Kitty vinyl bodies become?

I don’t blame their lawyer for having misgivings about the media tour. As horrible as their alleged plot is, they deserve to answer for their actions and NOT the fact they are terrible housekeepers with poor taste in decor. Catch anyone in a bad week, and the same could be said about us (um, minus the plan to blow people up). The gubmint already knows too much about us; we don’t need that information casually shared with Jack and Sally Public (because they’re jerks).

NOT WHAT IT SEEMS don’t judge me

the feels

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For all my rah-rah gung-ho yay-team posturing, I am afraid of change. Positive changes can be scary, but I’m usually all for them – it’s the negative changes that bring way, way down and into a whirlpool of fear that no Maytag repairman can haul me out of.

Things are a-foot at work, and I am simultaneously bummed out and terrified to the point where I didn’t get any sleep last night (it was also hot as balls, but for the most part I couldn’t turn my brain off and no amount of dong-counting could override the dreaded WHAT IF). I don’t want to get into specifics – I have faith that the Big Situation will be resolved shortly – but it’s the fallout of the Big Situation that is marbling up my ass: people are leaving the company.

I’m always sad when good people leave, but of the three people (that I know of) who won’t be around at the end of July, I’m particularly upset about one of them – he’s the lead of the recently-formed team I’m on, and I was really excited to work with him.

I know there are bigger issues here, but at the moment I’m wallowing in some self-pity – as much as I love being a tech writer, my new role is the stuff dreams are made of. I’d still get to write all the words, but I’d also get to CREATE and share ideas and have input and DO MORE, and it was everything I didn’t know I wanted but now can’t live without. I don’t want to go back to being a silent, non-essential member of the team. I want to DO STUFF, and I want to do it with the team that had been hand-picked for the STUFF we’d get to do.

All of the above may still happen – things are kind of up in the air at the moment – but I was really, really excited about my new team and specifically, working with the team lead. It’s just not going to be the same when he leaves, and that sucks. I am Seriously Bummed Out, and worried about the future. Both of these are uncomfortable feels, but having both at the same time is really fucking shitty. Uncertainty, you are not my friend.

I don’t want to think about having to look for work again – to say that I’d be devastated would be kind of an understatement – but on top of that unwelcome ulcer, there’s the sinking feeling that I’d never find another job as fun as this one has been and that would give me the chance to do the MORE I didn’t know I wanted so badly until it was enticingly dangled in front of my face.

I have all of the sad. I do not like it.

i liked it better when they fit.

the purge

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For next 12 hours, all gratuitous waste shall be guilt free.

Once again, that special time of the year is upon us: The Purge. There will be fewer legalized crime sprees, Ethan Hawke, and plot holes, but if all goes according to plan, the end result will be a bathroom counter I can actually see.

I often do wardrobe purges, but this time my goal is to clean out my literal and metaphorical drawers by getting rid of all my unworn makeup. I am something of a chronic impulse purchaser when it comes to cosmetics, and as a result, I have enough makeup to highlight the cheekbones of an entire army. This is stupid, because my day-to-day look rarely changes, and nowadays I tend to err on the side of not looking like a drag queen (which, I suppose, means I’m growing up. a little. sort of.). I have piles and piles of stuff I never wear, or is expired, or was a good idea at the time; all clogging up my counters and pores in equally terrible amounts. So, it’s time to purge. Anything that has not touched my skin in the last six months shall added to a colossal FFA pile, which my friends get to pick through (I’ve supplied most of my inner circle with makeup for years – it’s a good way to find out whether neon shimmery pink is truly your colour, or only something you wear to get out of jury duty). Once they’ve gorged themselves on things they’d never ever purchase for themselves (a frugal quality I could use a lot more of), I will donate the lot to the Wish Foundation here in Vancouver. It’s a Feel Good mission all around: I get a clean bathroom, my friends get a free makeup spree, and I earn karma by donating stuff to those in need (for the record, a LOT of people in Vancouver are in need of green eyeshadow). Because I get so much out of it – a clean counter for Lemon to walk on without destroying the universe, time with my friends, warm fuzzies – I am not allowed to feel guilty about all the money I spent, or that there are people in the world who have to go without tinted primer at all and here I am just giving it away. Even the famous Ed Stink Eye cannot dampen the thrill of the Purge – I rather perversely enjoy getting rid of things (it helps that I have so very many things), and (don’t tell my mother) sometimes I like doing a deep clean.

The decision I made years ago to actually care about my appearance has been terribly expensive. Let’s hope that never happens again.

i can recreate this look in eyeshadow. it’s not for everyone.